Professor Klumpp's research lies at the intersection of economics, political science, and law, and the four-year grant will support his ongoing work in these fields. A significant part of the project examines the effects of a number of court rulings that deregulated campaign spending and speech by political candidates and their supporters in the United States. Part of the award will be used to acquire detailed, race-level election and campaign finance data for the 2016 and 2018 U.S. election cycles, which will inform a long-term study on the effects of the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Citizens United decision in 2010.
Professor Klumpp's current work on this topic can be found in the working paper "The Business of American Democracy: Citizens United, Independent Spending, and Elections" (with Hugo Mialon and Michael Williams). Related studies, on which the SSHRC-funded project builds, include"Populism, Partisanship, and the Funding of Political Campaigns" and "Leveling the Playing Field? the Role of Public Campaign Funding in Elections" (forthcoming in the American Law and Economics Review).
.